Indigenous Rights News

LOMA DE BÁCUM, Mexico — October 21, 2016, is a date that the Yaqui community in the town of Loma de Bácum will never forget. That’s when the community’s inhabitants,…

JAKARTA — For the past four years, the indigenous community of Santa Clara de Uchunya has battled for state recognition of its right to ancestral forests in a remote pocket…

The number of indigenous leaders, community activists, and environmentalists killed every year while protecting their lands and communities from agribusiness, mining, and other industries continues to rise. According to a…

A recent article in Science reports that, while the portion of the world’s terrestrial surface allocated to protected areas has grown to around one-sixth of the area available, a significant…

A new study makes a significant contribution to the growing body of research showing that recognizing the land rights of and partnering with indigenous peoples can greatly benefit conservation efforts.…

KUCHING, Malaysia — For generations, the people of Papua New Guinea’s northeasternmostprovince, New Ireland, have depended on the region’s rich marine resources for their livelihoods. Like the rest of the…

KUCHING, Malaysia — In 1993, fisheries scientist John Aini founded the conservation group Ailan Awareness in Papua New Guinea’s New Ireland province to help his community and others nearby reverse…

A surge in Amazon deforestation is trending this year, with a 22 percent rise from August 2017 to May 2018. Experts say land thieves and politics may be at the heart of the problem.

KUCHING, Malaysia — Implicit gender and race bias within the conservation community may be undermining researchers’ work in both the field and in science publication, experts say. “One of the…

The best way to save forests and curb biodiversity loss is to recognize the claims of indigenous peoples to their territories, a new report urges. Published by the Rights and…

PORT MORESBY — Heavily armed civilian groups have burned and damaged ExxonMobil construction equipment in a land dispute involving a natural gas plant in Papua New Guinea. The civil unrest…

LA CEIBA, Honduras — In the small, sky-blue studio at the Faluma Bimetu community radio station, 32-year-old Cesar Benedict reaches for the controls and slowly fades out the fast percussive…

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has put a new community forest strategy in place, a move that proponents say could help provide Congolese with the chance to have a…

The unintended consequences of a U.S./China trade war could shift Chinese soy purchases from the U.S. to Brazil, leading to rising Amazon deforestation, and a hazardous climate change tipping point.

In July last year, Abdon Nababan, one of Indonesia’s most prominent activists, announced his intention to run for governor in his home province of North Sumatra. During his decade-long tenure…

In the village of Tewah, in the heart of Indonesian Borneo, stands a wooden church named Immanuel. When the church was founded by German missionaries more than a century ago,…

After a 20-minute canoe ride down the Curaray River, past a swamp that leaves her legs caked in mud up to her knees, Obe heads toward a waterfall set amid…

Chicago’s Field Museum presented the 23rd Parker/Gentry Award for conservation biology to the Instituto del Bien Común, an organization that works with indigenous communities in Peru, on May 24. The…

LOKOLAMA, Democratic Republic of Congo -- Sometime in March, I found myself trudging forward in a remote swamp in the heart of the Congo rainforest. As I worriedly tried to…

SUCUMBÍOS PROVINCE, Ecuador — “The land is dead,” says Camilo Pauche as he surveys with consternation the devastation that the oil industry has left in Pacayacu, a village in the Ecuadorian Amazon.…